Ill Artists' Effort to Insure That Art Survives AIDS

By GLENN COLLINS

Published: December 27, 1992

In those moments of uncertainty when Kevin Oldham summons up the specter of the AIDS virus that has threatened him for the last four years, it is the secondary death, the artistic death, that seems to be the authentic nightmare. He worries that the music he has devoted every bit of his waning energy to creating might be cast away, never performed, or -- worst of all -- forgotten.

A highly regarded 32-year-old composer in a discipline in which 50-year-olds are considered young turks, Mr. Oldham has just begun to win recognition. Yet along with an increasing number of young composers, painters, writers, choreographers and other artists, all of whom are H.I.V.-positive or who have AIDS, Mr. Oldham has had to face the fact of his artistic legacy at a younger age than most. For the first time, a systematic volunteer effort is helping artists to deal with the painful question of the posthumous future of their works.

"It seems to me that whether you stay alive or not seems to be the trivial part," Mr. Oldham said. "It's your work itself that must have a life of its own. If I can make sure that my music will continue to have life, that seems to be the more important consideration." 'A Positive Focus'

He is hardly alone in dealing with the issue of his artistic posterity. "Suddenly the issue of my work, and what happens to it when I'm not around with it -- that became very important to me," said Robert Farber, an artist whose recent show at the Artists Space in Manhattan linked the contemporary AIDS crisis to the early spreading of the bubonic plague in 1348. "It has given me a positive focus."

Mr. Oldham and Mr. Farber, who is 44, have both received assistance from the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, which is encouraging those in every artistic discipline to catalogue their works and prepare their estates. The project is sponsored by Alliance for the Arts, a nonprofit arts service and educational organization based in Manhattan.

Although most people resist making wills, many artists don't think about their estates until they are desperately ill, said Patrick Moore, the project director. "As a result, work by artists with AIDS is being discarded, lost or made inaccessible after their deaths," he said. "Artists who might have had 50 or 60 years to establish themselves are now dying in their 20's and 30's."

Mr. Moore said he has had "frantic calls from artists' friends who said that their work had been put in the trash, and was it too late to do something."

"Unfortunately it was," he said. "Almost as bad is the situation when an artist's work is consigned to someone's attic. The artist is then mute."

Yves Lubin, a Manhattan poet, anthologist and publisher, said that the poet Donald Woods, who died earlier this year, had no will, and that editors had no access to his work. The owner of Feature, a gallery on Broome Street in Manhattan, said that the highly praised artist Rene Santos, who died in 1986, was also intestate. The owner, Hudson (his sole legal name) said that Mr. Santos's work has been in storage, and out of the art market, ever since. Feature has finally obtained access to the work, and the gallery intends to mount an exhibition next year, Hudson said in an interview.

Work can also be lost through ignorance. "Often well-meaning relatives and executors don't understand the work and don't know what to do with it," said John Corigliano, the composer of "The Ghosts of Versailles," who has been an adviser to the Estate Project on the preservation of musical works. A 'Desperate Need' To Preserve Works

The initial response to AIDS involved care, research and civil rights. Now broader issues are being raised as the disease continues to spread. Robert Marks, executive director of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, said that estate planning was "hardly a trivial concern." He added: "There is a desperate need for the cataloguing and preservation of artists' work, and until the Estate Project, many artists weren't aware of it. The great achievement of the project is that it's getting out the word, and expanding some essential services that are desperately needed by the arts community."

There are no documented estimates of how many people in the arts have AIDS or are H.I.V.-positive. But many assume they number in the tens of thousands, said Randall Bourscheidt, president of the Alliance for the Arts. Artists who may be distracted by the fear of premature death or who may be undergoing the rigors of medical care may be the last to think of their own legacy. As for overburdened AIDS service providers, often they lack the staff and the expertise to advise artists about estate planning.

"This is the first project of its kind, and the first time that artists have been identified as a group with special estate-planning needs," said Randye Retkin, director of legal services at the Gay Men's Health Crisis. "We think the effort is very important."

The project has given information to more than a thousand artists with AIDS, exhorting them to plan early while they are still well, to document and inventory works in their own or others' possession, to execute a will and to designate capable and knowledgeable executors, trustees and beneficiaries.